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It was standing room only at the Bluefield Auditorium Tuesday as citizens from across the two Virginias came out to ask officials to preserve postal facilities in Bluefield.
Area residents, business owners, local and state officials, and representatives of the United States Postal Service gathered at the meeting to discuss the future of Bluefield’s Postal Distribution and Processing Center.
Chuck Kinser, a retired postal worker, said he felt the postal service was letting people in the area down.
“If you want to make things work, you’ll make it work; if not, you’ll make an excuse,” Kinser said. “We need to find a way to make this work. People have an allegiance to the postal service. Customers will not let this die. Employees will not let this die. Sadly, management will let it die and that is shameful.”
Bill Neighbors, a postal customer, suggested an alternative to closing the Bluefield facility.
“I am sure everyone here would like to know what the savings would be if we moved the Charleston and Johnson City facilities to Bluefield,” he said.
Tom Lilly, a local businessman who rents the USPS building where the Bluefield center is said the facility had been looking to expand months prior.
“You asked for a quote for additional property because you were contemplating combining the Johnson City facility here,” Lilly said. “There had to be a study for that. We’ll be glad to keep jobs in this area and rent out even more space to you. Give southern West Virginia a break.”
Mayor Linda Whalen said the loss of the facility would be detrimental to Bluefield as a whole, sighting a Bluefield Daily Telegraph editorial about how the city was beginning to recover from the economic recession.
“Our community is growing,” Whalen said. “We believe we are pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps. We need all the help we can get. We can not afford to pull jobs out of Bluefield.”
Marc Meachum, president of the Greater Bluefield Chamber of Commerce, said the postal service needed to focus more on the impact on people rather than on finances.
“You have a lot of folks here whose livelihoods have been built in the Bluefield area,” Meachum said. “They will have to uproot their families. We need jobs in Bluefield. That’s very critical and important for you to think about it. You said the results of this study when it is complete will be online. I suggest you mail them to us.”
U.S. Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., was one of the officials who spoke at the meeting.
“I would have to ask about the long-term effects, the effect on the incomes of these people into the local economy,” Rahall said in reference to the seven postal workers who could lose their jobs as a result of the study. “I would like to see the effect on those workers who are being relocated. It is a lot harder to move a person than by just saying they will be relocated. It appears that the rural areas of our country are being unfairly targeted. The bottom line is the postal service is a public service with public responsibility. Don’t forget that.”
Bluefield, Va., Mayor Don Harris, State Sen. Mark Wills, D-Mercer, was in attendance of the meeting as were Representa-tives from U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and U.S. Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Va.
Darryl Meyers, district manager of the Appalachian District of USPS, said the postal service can no longer compete with the current state of the economy and the rising use of e-mail.
“We have to adjust due to changes in our environment and those changes have been major,” Meyers said. “We are not just in a financial crisis. We can no longer hold back the Internet. You will see the same helpful carrier providing you the best service of any organization you can find. You will still see that friendly clerk at the post office. There will still be postal workers and there will still be postal service in our communities, but things will be different. We must change.”
The postal service concluded an Area Mail Processing Study at the Bluefield center earlier this month, with the initial results of the study finding that $2.1 million in revenue to the postal service could be saved by consolidating the Bluefield distribution center with others in Charleston and Johnson City, Tenn.
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